


right there beside you

by sister_wolf



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-12
Updated: 2004-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_wolf/pseuds/sister_wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's right there beside you, right where he's supposed to be...</p>
            </blockquote>





	right there beside you

You can think you've changed, think you've grown up, but when presented with the same temptations as before, you fall in as if nothing's changed. You've never learned how to resist temptation, only how to remove yourself from its likely path.

For a supposed control freak, you sure are eager to lose control, lose your choices, abdicate responsibility. Two days in and you're already falling into line, Joe Dick's right-hand man. It'd be funny, if it wasn't such a fucking travesty. Tragedy. Whatever.

Joe asks you what's so fucking funny and you stare at him, surprised. You'd forgotten anything existed outside your own fucked-up head, and if that isn't a metaphor for everything that's gone wrong with-- No. Fuck metaphors.

Everything, you tell him, that's what's so fucking funny, and he gives you that old familiar look, one part irritation, one part amused exasperation, and four parts hunger and obsession. Simple recipe for a complex mess, a mess you walked away from all those years ago. Never thought you'd have to see it again, all the questions and hunger in his eyes.

He punches you in the shoulder and calls you a dink, and it's so easy, so fucking easy, and god knows you've never been good at avoiding the easy path. Temptation's got you squarely in its jaws, and you, Billy Boisy, are well and truly fucked.

***

He's right there beside you, right where he's supposed to be, but he's stuck inside his head again, miles away from you, not even aware you're staring at him, and that is fucking unacceptable. You didn't do all this—arranging the benefit, talking Bruce into filming, asking favors from fucking Mulligan—just to watch Billy ignore you. Fuck that.

"What's so fucking funny?" you ask. He looks at you like he's surprised to find you here, like his mind was back in fucking Hell A. Like he's already gone.

"Everything. That's what's so fucking funny," he says, smiling that enigmatic Billy smile. Like he's laughing at some joke that no one else will ever be able to get. You hate that.

You've never been able to figure out what the fuck is going on behind his eyes. Sometimes you just want to take a hammer or something and smash his skull in, so that maybe you can finally see what's inside his head. The secret life of Mr. Billy Tallent, written out in spatters of blood and brain. Of course, then he'd be dead, and that would suck, so you've never given in to that particular impulse.

"Dink," you say, punching him in the shoulder, and he's laughing with you this time, right there with you.

He's yours, he's always been yours, and something's gonna die before you ever let him leave you again.


End file.
